I bought a Pansonic CF-25LJM8EAM notebook. All important chips on the mainboard are listed here:
http://www.miernik.ctnet.pl/linuxbios/CF-25LJM8EAM-chiplist
Bari, can you spot which one is the "keyboard controller" which you said is usually the critical problem on getting LinuxBIOS to a laptop?
The chipset is supported (Intel TX).
szrenica:~# lspci -v 0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 430TX - 82439TX MTXC (rev 01) Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 01) Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0
0000:00:01.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01) (prog-if 80 [Master]) Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64 I/O ports at ffa0 [size=16]
0000:00:01.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [UHCI]) Flags: medium devsel I/O ports at 1000 [size=32]
0000:00:01.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 01) Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 9
0000:00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Neomagic Corporation NM2093 [MagicGraph 128ZV] (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [VGA]) Flags: medium devsel Memory at 42000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4M]
0000:00:13.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 01) Subsystem: Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.: Unknown device 8306 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 11 Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K] Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=04, sec-latency=176 Memory window 0: 10000000-103ff000 (prefetchable) Memory window 1: 10400000-107ff000 I/O window 0: 00004400-000044ff I/O window 1: 00004800-000048ff 16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001
0000:00:13.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 01) Subsystem: Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.: Unknown device 8306 Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 11 Memory at f0001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K] Bus: primary=00, secondary=05, subordinate=08, sec-latency=176 Memory window 0: 10800000-10bff000 (prefetchable) Memory window 1: 10c00000-10fff000 I/O window 0: 00004c00-00004cff I/O window 1: 00005000-000050ff 16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001
szrenica:~#
What are the chances of getting this to work?
The BIOS flash is unfortunately soldered, but I thing of giving the mainboard to an electronics facility so they can desolder it and solder a socket there.
Interesting, the CPU is in a socket, so it might be possible to mount a AMD K6-2 350 MHz. It is possible on other Intel 430TX motherboards after binary patching the BIOS. Here is a site with binary patches for such BIOSes in many motherboards: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm
Miernik wrote:
I bought a Pansonic CF-25LJM8EAM notebook. All important chips on the mainboard are listed here:
http://www.miernik.ctnet.pl/linuxbios/CF-25LJM8EAM-chiplist
Bari, can you spot which one is the "keyboard controller" which you said is usually the critical problem on getting LinuxBIOS to a laptop?
The keyboard controller usually doesn't show up on lspci. You have to open the case and look at the board.
What are the chances of getting this to work?
I think the TX chipset is supported under version 1 (the old tree) of LinuxBIOS.
The BIOS flash is unfortunately soldered, but I thing of giving the mainboard to an electronics facility so they can desolder it and solder a socket there.
Interesting, the CPU is in a socket, so it might be possible to mount a AMD K6-2 350 MHz. It is possible on other Intel 430TX motherboards after binary patching the BIOS. Here is a site with binary patches for such BIOSes in many motherboards: http://web.inter.nl.net/hcc/J.Steunebrink/k6plus.htm
I'd have to dig back into the TX datasheets to see how the TX handled cpu changes. It may use pinstraps vs register settings or a combination of both.
-Bari
Bari Ari bari@onelabs.com wrote:
Miernik wrote:
I bought a Pansonic CF-25LJM8EAM notebook. All important chips on the mainboard are listed here:
http://www.miernik.ctnet.pl/linuxbios/CF-25LJM8EAM-chiplist
Bari, can you spot which one is the "keyboard controller" which you said is usually the critical problem on getting LinuxBIOS to a laptop?
The keyboard controller usually doesn't show up on lspci. You have to open the case and look at the board.
In the URL above I have a list of all significantly-looking chips on the board. Can you spot anything which might be the keyboard controller?
Miernik wrote:
Bari Ari bari@onelabs.com wrote:
Miernik wrote:
I bought a Pansonic CF-25LJM8EAM notebook. All important chips on the mainboard are listed here:
http://www.miernik.ctnet.pl/linuxbios/CF-25LJM8EAM-chiplist
Bari, can you spot which one is the "keyboard controller" which you said is usually the critical problem on getting LinuxBIOS to a laptop?
It may not be a problem. It all depends on if they use the controller for enabling writes to Flash. See how far you can get with replacing the BIOS.
In the URL above I have a list of all significantly-looking chips on the board. Can you spot anything which might be the keyboard controller?
IC327 20+20+20+20=80 ------------------ | Mitsubishi | M38867E8AHP | IM 842A101 ------------------
Probably this 8-bit micro is used.
http://documentation.renesas.com/eng/products/mpumcu/e3886g.pdf
Off topic - the Toughbooks had great cases. I recall someone testing one a few years ago by shooting it at a basketball hoop and it landing on concrete and it still ran fine.
-Bari
Bari Ari bari@onelabs.com wrote:
http://documentation.renesas.com/eng/products/mpumcu/e3886g.pdf
Renesas ? So it's the one that you said you can get all nessesary documentation out of?
So we have a winner! A laptop with an Intel chipset and Renesas controller.
I remember you said you want to choose a rather new notebook.
We'd have to check what Panasonic CF-18, CF-28 and CF-29 use, as these are the newest rugged Toughbooks, and might be a great choice if they still use Renesas controllers.
Here I have a list of all toughbook models I could spot:
http://www.miernik.ctnet.pl/linuxbios/toughbook.info
Althrough I cannot afford anything newer than CF-27 out of that list, so I would have to wait several years to use your LinuxBIOS.
Off topic - the Toughbooks had great cases. I recall someone testing one a few years ago by shooting it at a basketball hoop and it landing on concrete and it still ran fine.
I bought it because I damage most standard notebooks quickly, and cellphones too. I use Nokia 6250 rugged cellphone, after about 7 other cellphones didn't live more than several months in my hands.
Miernik wrote:
Bari Ari bari@onelabs.com wrote:
http://documentation.renesas.com/eng/products/mpumcu/e3886g.pdf
Renesas ? So it's the one that you said you can get all nessesary documentation out of?
That's the link to the data sheet, and it looks like Panasonic used the "one time PROM" version of the device so there will be no reprogramming the micro. At least you have a pinout for the micro from the datasheet.
-Bari
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Bari Ari -
Miernik